25 Years of the War on Terror: How Islamophobia Became Policy
“Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.
We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.
This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.”
– President George W. Bush, September 20, 2001
On September 11, 2001, 19 members of the transnational non-state militant organization, al-Qaeda, hijacked four commercial passenger planes in the United States as part of a coordinated attack against the country. The hijackers flew two planes into the World Trade Centers in New York City, and one into the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. The last plane was aimed for the White House, but passengers resisted, resulting in the hijackers crashing the plane into a field in rural Pennsylvania. In total, 2,977 people died. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. soil by a foreign actor since Pearl Harbor (1941).
Officials, including the President of the United States George W. Bush characterized the attack as an act of war. Three days after the attack, a near-unanimous Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), giving the President and the Executive branch unlimited power to use force. Five days after the passage of this historic legislation, President Bush gave an address to the nation, outlining the U.S.’s response to the attacks: the Global War on Terror.
The parameters of this war were broad, encompassing any nation or group that failed to stand with America in this fight against “terrorism”- an ill-defined and vague term. It was borderless and timeless, and instead of defining a clear enemy, President Bush’s speech framed the armed conflict through civilizational terms, making it an existential fight between “good” and “evil.” Despite President Bush asserting that the fight was not against Islam and against “terrorists” who practice “a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics,” subsequent rhetoric and policies routinely framed all Muslims through a lens of suspicion and cast Islam as a religion that promoted violence. This framing has significantly influenced and shaped America’s actions for the past 25 years and has played a key role in the mainstreaming and globalization of Islamophobia today.
Following 9/11, there were several key events, policies, and projects that shaped America’s understanding of what terrorism was and who terrorists are. However, much of this was not rooted in rigorous analysis with scientific reasoning and sound methodologies, rather they relied on deeply racist and harmful stereotypes about Islam, Muslims, and Arabs—many of which date back to the time of the Crusades. President Bush himself invoked this when he addressed the American people in the days following the attack, describing the “war on terrorism” as a “crusade.” The Crusades occurred between 11th-14 centuries and were a series of religious military campaigns between Western European Christians and Muslims aimed at controlling sacred sites in the Holy Land. Many scholars and religious leaders point to this time period as the one in which Islamophobic and orientalist stereotypes and tropes arose. The primary ones being the Muslims (often equated with Arabs) were violent, sexually deviant, misogynistic, heretics, and uncivilized and that Islam was a false religion that promoted violence and domination. This centuries-old script is precisely what post-9/11 rhetoric revived.
The War on Terror and “counterterrorism” discourse
The religious undercurrents and the invocation of fear-inducing terminology of “terrorists,” “extremists”, “fundamentalist,” and “radicals” presented this conflict not as one of war between two political groups, but rather a civilizational and existential fight. Thus, any and all actions taken by the United States were justified under the guise that this was a righteous defense of Western civilization against a barbaric, fanatical enemy bent on its destruction. This discourse has played a crucial role in the justification of dehumanizing and violent policies—and it has been exported across the globe. It is important to note, though, that while the War on Terror created the institutional scaffolding around Islamophobia and governance of the Muslim subject, systemic and interpersonal forms of anti-Muslim racism around the globe (whether it be in Europe or the global South) are textured and influenced by local context, histories, and geopolitics.
In the years and decades following 9/11, the dominant narrative has held Muslims collectively responsible for 9/11 and for any subsequent violence involving Muslim perpetrators, framing them as inherently susceptible to terrorism and casting Islam itself as a religion that promotes violence. This climate gave rise to a cottage industry of self-styled “counterterrorism” experts. These “experts” marketed their “expertise” on Islam and terrorism to federal and local law enforcement, profiting directly from Homeland Security grant programs. Their “research” and analysis helped build and sustain entire programs and policies based on a racist premise.
The discourse hardened as the U.S. government took measures framed as a response to the 9/11 attacks. Such actions included but were not limited to the U.S.’s invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the establishment of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay in 2002, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (a war of aggression under false and manipulated allegations), use of rendition and torture, secret CIA black sites, institution of drone warfare, and the destabilization on entire countries resulting in mass migration and a refugee crises. In a September 2021 report, the Cost of War project estimated that at least 37 million “people have fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001.” In a 2023 journal article for the NYU Review of Law & Social Change, Azadeh Shahshahani and Divya Babbula concluded that “the Global War on Terror has caused lasting harm to individuals, communities, natural resources, infrastructure, and the economies of targeted countries.”
At home, the government’s expansive power resulted in unchecked and uncritical acceptance of “counterterrorism” programs and policies that viewed a certain segment (Arabs and/or Muslim Americans) of the population through a lens of suspicion. The presumption was guilty until proven innocent. This securitization of Islam and Muslims expressed itself through policies such as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), creation of a Terrorism Screening Database (with 98% of individuals on the list being Muslim), No-Fly list (over 99% of individuals on the list are Muslim), use of informants and entrapment in manufacturing “terrorism” cases, surveillance of mosques, Muslim organizations, and Muslim Americans, imprisonment of Muslims on the pretext that they were associated with “terrorism”/extremism, and the expansion of criminal charges (i.e. “material support.”) to try Muslims under. Over the past two decades, the result has been the erosion of constitutional protections for Muslims and Arabs, the intensification of police militarization, and the creation and solidification of the “counterterrorism” cottage industry, which has been key to providing junk science to justify policies rooted in racism.
The rise of the Islamophobia industry
Before today’s social media influencers, there were the post-9/11 Islamophobic bloggers, whose voices played a significant role in shaping public perception and opinion towards Islam and Muslims. Alongside media outlets that portrayed Muslims as extremists, terrorists, and radicals, this industry of voices and organizations manufactured threats and hysteria around a constructed alleged threat posed by Islam and Muslims. Voices like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer gained popularity and notoriety, especially amongst the right, as they framed their Islamophobic rhetoric as vital campaigns to protect America and Americans. The Islamophobia industry, as it has come to be identified, involved bloggers and writers like Geller and Spencer, but also think-tanks, media networks, politicians, grassroots organizations and activists. Pumping life into this were donor-advised funds and charities that funneled millions of dollars into sustaining and building these voices. Islamophobia became a key political tactic, as politicians claimed the greatest threat was Islam, Muslims, and terrorism, and that only they could stop it. It also became a lucrative and electorally beneficial strategy—one built on the dehumanization of billions of people.
In the post-9/11 environment, a segment of this industry overlapped with the cottage industry of self-styled “counterterrorism” experts and pundits. These voices promoted Islamophobic logic for personal and often financial gain. Some positioned their alleged experiences as “former radicals” or “former extremists” as the credentials underpinning their expertise. These voices were routinely welcomed on mainstream media networks and supported by governments to offer scientifically unsound explanations, particularly in the aftermath of a violent attack by a Muslim perpetrator. Many of these voices used their arguments to support “countering violent extremism” policies, which were built on the notion that Islamic religious conservatism made individuals more likely to commit violence. Compounding these voices and legitimating their arguments has been the wider apparatus in which the language of “terrorism” and “extremism” has been and continues to be applied almost exclusively to crimes committed by Muslims — manufacturing the very data used to justify the racist claim that Muslims are inherently prone to violence. It’s a circular loop.
Cost of war
While the actual numbers are probably higher, Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that nearly one million people have died in the post-9/11 wars due to direct war violence. Of the estimated 940,000+, nearly 50 percent were civilians killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001 and 2023. The War on Terror isn’t limited to bombs and drone strikes; rather, as the Costs of War project has analyzed, it continues to cause deaths and injuries as a result of war’s destruction of economies, public services, infrastructure, and the environment. The project finds that an estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting. When it comes to monetary costs, a 2021 report from the Cost of War project found that 20 years of post-9/11 wars have cost the U.S. an estimated $8 trillion.
Today, the post-9/11 war on terror has expanded exponentially, to include operations and engagement in over 78 countries. The Cost of War project states that it involves “deploying airstrikes against militant targets, engaging in combat with militants, leading military exercises and exporting a militarized counterterrorism model to dozens of countries through ‘training and assistance.’” This has occurred due to the original Islamophobic narratives, tactics, and institutional protections provided to the authorities in the aftermath of 9/11. What was presented to the public as the only way to defend America in the face of an attack has been weaponized for a quarter of a century to launch campaigns of terror and repression against millions of innocent civilians around the globe.
The Trump administration and its attacks on marginalized communities
The post-9/11 Islamophobic logic hinges on the premise that a person’s identity can be a security concern. Following the attacks, the state deemed Muslim identity a threat. In the following decades, this racist argument has been utilized, promoted, and institutionalized by voices and authorities in the United States and across the globe. A quarter-century later, its architecture remains standing, but it has been expanded to frame other identities as a threat.
The Trump administration absorbed the Islamophobia industry into the mainstream, as anti-Muslim racism became the policy platform of the first administration. Along with Donald Trump himself, senior appointees shared a common belief that Islam and Muslims are a danger to the United States. Not only that, many of the individuals were connected to the Islamophobia industry, and their roles in government allowed for fringe voices and views to move from the blogs and social media platforms to the West Wing. While some were connected to the Islamophobia industry (i.e. Mike Pompeo), others were directly part of it (i.e. Stephen Miller). It’s not surprising then that in Donald Trump’s first term, he singled out Islam and Muslims as the key policy issue, repeatedly demonizing the faith and community, and eroding constitutional protections by discriminating against a population due to its faith. This was most significantly expressed in the Muslim Ban.
The post-9/11 legal precedents paved the way for the Trump administration’s (both first and second term) attacks on immigrant communities. Immigrant communities of color have been repeatedly deemed a national security threat, resulting in the militarization of federal authorities who have responded to this constructed “threat” with violence that is much more attributed to counterterrorism operations than everyday policing. We have seen this most clearly in the way that ICE has terrorized communities across the country, resulting in the arrests of children and even multiple deaths. Much of this has been allowed to take place due to the expansion of executive authority that occurred following 9/11, giving the President the power to “designate, detain, and deport people” it determines to be “terrorists.”
25 years later
A quarter of a century later, the language and infrastructure of the War on Terror remains firmly in place, flexible enough to expand at the will of presidential authority that can unilaterally deem a marginalized community to be a threat, with little to no scrutiny or accountability. Extreme polarization, the acceptance and celebration of Islamophobia as a legitimate viewpoint, and the rising cost of living have given politicians room to escalate their bigoted rhetoric, scapegoating a community to obscure their own institutional failures and corrupt personal gain. Today, we have members of Congress who openly say dogs are preferable to Muslims and that “Muslims don’t belong in American society” with no consequence. This would never be accepted or tolerated (and rightfully so) if it were members of any other community. Muslim communities in the United States and around the globe continue to grapple with the aftermath of 9/11 daily, as their faith is routinely demonized and those in power continue to dehumanize them.
A knee-jerk, retaliatory response to the deaths of thousands of Americans snowballed into decades of endless war and violence abroad, killing millions of Muslims, and the erosion of civil rights and liberties at home. Today, it has resulted in an unchecked executive branch under the helm of an authoritarian leader focused on eroding constitutional protections. It may be 25 years since that horrific day, but the aftershocks continue to lead America down a dangerous path—further from its founding promise of a democratic, pluralist nation for all its citizens.